With Faith in the Spotlight, Candidates Battle for Catholic Votes

By ROBIN TONER

Published: April 15, 2008

Many years have passed since the Democratic Party was as much a part of American Catholic identity as weekly Mass and parochial school. But it still came as a shock to many Democrats to lose the Catholic vote, a key group in must-win states like Ohio, in the 2004 presidential election.

It is an experience they are determined not to repeat.

The presidential candidates are in the middle of an escalating battle for Catholic voters -- most immediately between Senators Barack Obama of Illinois and Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York in the Pennsylvania Democratic primary, but also between the two parties as they look ahead to the general election. This struggle is an important part of the backdrop for Pope Benedict XVI's trip to the United States starting Tuesday, which has drawn gestures of respect from all of the presidential contenders.

There is widespread agreement that American Catholic voters are far more diverse than monolithic. Even so, both the Clinton and the Obama campaigns have hired Catholic outreach directors, deployed an army of prominent Catholic surrogates testifying on their behalf and created mailings that highlight their commitment to Catholic social teachings on economic justice and the common good.

Dismayed at losing so many Catholic and other religious voters to the Republicans in 2004, Democrats talk far more often, and more comfortably, about their values and the importance of their own faith these days.

Essentially, they have tried to broaden the definition of ''values'' issues beyond abortion rights, on which they disagree with the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church and many religious conservatives. Mrs. Clinton, for example, spoke recently about the economy and the needs of working families to a crowd of more than 2,000 at Mercyhurst, a Catholic college in Erie, Pa. The college and the candidate went ahead with the event despite the objections of the local bishop, who argued that a Catholic institution should reflect the church's ''pro-life stance'' on abortion.

On Sunday, the Democratic candidates appeared separately at a forum at Messiah College in Grantham, Pa., for a televised discussion of poverty, health care, energy prices and the rest of the party's policy agenda as moral and spiritual issues. (The forum also offered Mr. Obama a chance to note that he had once attended Catholic school, and Mrs. Clinton a chance to praise the Vatican as ''the first carbon-neutral state in the world.'')

Mrs. Clinton, a Methodist, carried the Catholic vote overwhelmingly in Ohio, Texas and several other major states that have held primaries and caucuses this year, according to surveys of voters leaving the polls; she hopes to do so again in Pennsylvania, which holds its primary next week. (Aides say she is particularly popular among nuns.) In an open letter to Pennsylvania Catholics, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., two children of Robert F. Kennedy, wrote, ''Catholics have a partner in Hillary Clinton, one who will work to advance the common good of all Pennsylvanians and all Americans.''

Burns Strider, senior adviser and director of faith outreach for the Clinton campaign, said: ''There's no grand clandestine or secret message or formula here. It's just a matter of middle-class and working-class people whose values match up very well with Senator Clinton's.''

Bill Clinton carried the Catholic vote in 1992 and 1996. Some analysts say that considerable loyalty remains to the ''Clinton brand,'' notably on bread-and-butter issues like health care. The Obama campaign is acutely sensitive to the notion that their candidate is vulnerable among these voters; some of Mr. Obama's allies argue that it makes little sense to even think of Catholics as a voting bloc, given the huge differences among them.

Even so, on Friday, the Obama campaign unveiled its national advisory council of prominent Catholics, including elected officials, theologians, academics, nuns and social advocates. On a conference call, Representative Patrick J. Murphy -- who represents Bucks County, Pa., and prefaced his remarks by noting that he was St. Anselm's Altar Boy of the Year in 1987 -- said that Mr. Obama spoke ''to the better angels in all of us.''

Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, another prominent Catholic supporting Mr. Obama, noted: ''I don't agree with him on some issues. We disagree on abortion.'' But Mr. Casey said he believed that Mr. Obama, as president, would advocate for ''the least, the last and the lost.''

Republicans said their party raised its share of Catholic voters from 37 percent in the 1996 presidential election to 52 percent in 2004, part of their overall success in wooing and mobilizing church-going voters. They vow to hold them this time.

''We're going to devote substantial resources to winning the Catholic vote,'' said Frank Donatelli, deputy chairman of the Republican National Committee. ''I think the natural home of Catholics is the Republican Party.''

The campaign of Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, recently rolled out his National Catholics for McCain Committee, with Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, as a co-chairman.